Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a semiconductor device, a battery monitoring system, and a method for activating the semiconductor device.
Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, plural semiconductor devices that are connected in series and that communicates with each other, so-called daisy-chain connected semiconductor devices, are known. In a case in which such plural semiconductor devices are activated, and particularly in a case in which the state of the semiconductor devices are recovered from a standby state in a power down mode, the activation is sequentially performed from the lowest semiconductor device to the upper semiconductor device. Therefore, in the conventional semiconductor device, a regulator and a communication circuit that performs the communication between the semiconductor devices are set to be in the operation state during the standby state, so as to enable the communication between the semiconductor devices at any time (for example, see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (JP-A) No. 2012-044768 and JP-A No. 2010-146991).
However, in the conventional semiconductor device, current consumption may not be sufficiently reduced, due to the operation of the regulator and the operation between the semiconductor devices during the standby state.